Learning from my biggest failure.
How I learned from a rollout flop and turned it into a success.
Hello friends. Just a quick note before we dig into my biggest failure.
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We all want to believe that every story, product, or thing we touch can glide through from our brain and into production completely unscathed.
However, if you’ve worked in your role for more than 5 minutes, you realize there’s a chance that you will face some bumps along the road.
When I read about overcoming adversity from others, I love hearing how they landed in their tough situation, assessed what went wrong, and returned stronger. So, I’d like to share the situation I’ve deemed my “biggest failure as a product person” as a reminder that we all have it in us to get better.
The problem.
Our team had a big challenge: we wanted to save our sales team time and make their work more effective. The idea was to use a speech analytics tool. This tool would listen to all sales calls, turn them into text, and then point out where we could help our team improve.
We thought this would be a game-changer, making every call a chance to learn and improve at selling. It was about making things simpler and more efficient for our salespeople.
But as we discovered, our first attempt at solving this problem didn’t go as planned.
What happened?
We started excitedly working with our training team to create this new tool. We expected our sales team to use it in their daily work. But we missed something important: we didn’t listen to what our sales team needed.
Because of this, the tool we made wasn't used much. It wasn’t that the tool was bad; it just didn’t fit into how our sales team worked. We built something great, but it didn’t match our team's needs.
This meant our good intentions were not helpful to the people we wanted to help.
What went wrong?
We took a step back to see where we went wrong. We realized we built our tool based on a process our sales team didn’t value much. The way we did quality assurance and training with a team outside of the sales team was in favor of the teams, which meant they weren’t excited about our new tool from the start.
Also, the tool gave out scores based on how the sales calls went, but these scores were mostly negative because the speech technology wasn’t very accurate. Seeing how every team member - even the best - was showing up in the red made everyone dislike the tool as soon as they saw what we provided.
We learned we needed to understand what our sales team found helpful and ensure any technology we used worked well.
The Change-up.
Knowing we needed to change things, we started with a simpler version of the tool. This time, we worked closely with some of the sales managers. They didn’t just give us ideas; they helped lead the change.
They talked to their teams about the new tool, showing them how it could help. We provided real examples based on what was important to the leaders, and as they reviewed each call we flagged, they started to understand how powerful what we were building could be.
This made a big difference because it meant our sales team felt like they were part of creating something useful.
Try and try again. Until you get it right.
Things went way better when we launched the tool again but to a smaller group of 50 salespeople. Everyone liked it this time.
We started to expand into multiple sales teams and even layer in additional changes based on the feedback we received.
We then trained teams nationwide, and soon, our tool was being used to review the 2,000 team member staff’s calls with our customers.
Not only did we see the expansion of the tool, but we even put together a team of 10 people focused on improving it. Our tool helped our sales team this time and made a big difference in their work.
Our work helped us to evolve from our 2 calls/team member/month status quo into enabling our teams to review every single call. It was a win for our training, operational, and, most importantly, the customers who would be talking to us.
Hopefully, reading an example of how to fail and iterate resonates with you as you look at what you have going on with your work. We don’t have to settle for failure - we should look for the positives and ways to improve and push forward. Remember…
“You are not defined by your past, your struggles, or your circumstances. You are defined by your strength, your kindness, and your ability to overcome. Keep pushing forward, and know that you are never alone.” -Lynda Dobbs
We need more stories that portraits the reality of the job, right? Thanks for sharing your experience, Mike!